Why KILLING BEAUTY Makes SENSE

The Dark Side of humanity makes sense. As long as this terrible truth is covered up, it will fester, promoting the deepest infections, as it does. The Dark is not just obscure, vicious, cruel: ignoring it prevents the Enlightenment to proceed further.

Thanks to taxpayer money, a giant Ariane V rocket launched the Rosetta Mission to a comet, more than ten years ago. In France plutocrats pay taxes at several times the rate of the (lightly taxed plutocrats of the) USA. Taxes make a mission such as Rosetta and its lander Philae, possible (French experiments are also at the core of the present and future NASA Mars landers).

Science feeds the Enlightenment, with hard facts, so does history. History, inasmuch as the part of it consisting of hard facts, is part of science, and also feeds the Enlightenment.

Now the lander Philae, busy in a hole somewhere on the complicated ground of the comet, where it gets sun occasionally, feeding its batteries, has found complex organic materials on the surface. Such complex compounds eventually turned into living organisms here on Earth. Philae found that they must have existed in much of the early solar system. This raises new hopes of finding life beyond our planet. Indeed, several planetary bodies (Europa, Ganymede, Enceladus, etc.) harbor liquid water. It seems that Europa’s ocean is more massive than Earth’s. Ganymede’s ocean seems to be most of the Solar System’s water (with a depth of 800 kms). The recent discovery of fishes (!) 850 kilometers from the open sea (and the sun!) under an Antarctica iceshelf, below the freezing point of sweet water, indicates that Earth’s life could be adapted to Jupiter’s satellites.

After philosophers on some obscure site, censored me for allegedly veering off a comment presenting a story hinging on a story about stories, and a Malaysian Airlines jet debris was found at the (French) Reunion Island, having also severely veered off course, being at Reunion, 180 degrees from its original destination China, comic relief is in order.

Is amusement provided by plutocrats who shower themselves in public, to advertise that they give what’s for them pennies for research on Charcot’s disease (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis)? Is it funny that plutocrats believe we are so dumb that clowning around will enable them to disguise themselves into the innocuous clowns whom they are the exact opposite of? Who wants to heavily tax innocuous clowns? Bill Gates and Mr. Z from Facebook correctly believe no one will. So they monkey around, hoping we will do the same. It deeply evil to depict the Gates of Hell as fun and games.

What we need to do with plutocrats is to eliminate them all together, with harrowing taxation. Until they succumb, and disappear as a species. Then research in ALS, biology and medicine, could be funded appropriately. Only then. Moreover, we will also have enough money to send missions searching for life to Europa and Enceladus (the technology exists: a probe flying through an Enceladus geyser, or the attending ring, would find proof of life readily). With a tiny part of the money we will have left, we can go watch real circuses.

Money is power, power on other people, giant money is giant power on other people. Giant power on other people is intrinsically inhuman (it’s not anticipated by ten million years of evolving human ethology).

Giant power by people on other people is intrinsically diabolical. Diabolical, in the divine sense. Giant power on other people, such as Bill Gates imposing on us his pseudo-clownish behavior, provides the Dark Side with an aspect which evolution itself did not anticipate, so that there is a super-stitious character to it: something which stands above reality, as anticipated by evolution, since before there was T-Rex, and it tore its prey in half.

The Dark Side reaches all over. Including “care”.

Big money brought us Obamacare. Obamacare was going to be the way the “free” market buys and sells us to perfect health care, through “consumers’ choices”. Obamacare was enthusiastically promoted by the likes of Paul Krugman. In the latest news, health care in the USA became 5.5% more expensive in 2014 (whereas incomes did not perk up). Obamacare was not what it seemed. Lies everywhere, not just to manipulate power, but as the fluttering flags, representing the rule of that power, for all to see.

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I KILL, THEREFORE I AM:

So this rich American dentist went to Africa, offered the natives $50,000, and killed the most famous lion in the local national park. Excuse me, we are Americans, and we believe in drone philosophy: we kill whoever, whatever we want, because we can. Anything can be bought, remember? Just as Bill Gates and Facebook’s Mr. Z keep their taxes low, by taking showers in public. All over, things are not what they look.

So why did this dentist kill this beautiful lion? Some claim it’s senseless. Senseless makes for a good insult, because it’s polite enough. However, “senseless” is a non sequitur. If one really wants to penetrate the mind of one’s opponent, and his error, one has to find in which sense, he makes sense (to his, or her, self).

It makes no sense to claim there is no sense to what so many people (hunters, warriors, plutocrats) feel makes sense. Figuring out how it makes sense, to them, far from being senseless, aggravates their case. Because it allows us to condemn, not just their acts, but also the systems of thought, moods, and minds, which brought these errors.

The lion was killed because it was beautiful and powerful. And not just that. Cecil the Lion was tortured, so that his power would be debased, over many hours. Shot first with a powerful modern bow, the lion was tracked down for 40 hours, and one can imagine Walter the dentist drinking martinis, chuckling on the lion’s suffering. Because Walter the dentist kills animals, has killed many animals, with bow and arrows. Not just to give animals a chance to survive, but, obviously, to give them a chance, and to give him the chance, to experience torture. Whereas a rifle shot tends to be very incapacitating, be it only from blood loss, old Assyrian, or Persian iconography represents lions full of arrows, and still fierce (see above). In the Wild West white men found themselves so full of arrows they looked like porcupines, and still, they were not dead. That brought more respect to Native Americans. (Although a modern bow can launch an arrow with some much force that it can go through a Polar Bear harassed by dogs, killing it in three seconds… This situation does not apply to a lion, which is much faster and limber, hence a poor target.)

A major motivation for human beings is to kill, maim, torture, oppress and subjugate. Forgetting that major fact, is forgetting human nature. Gates and Facebook’s Mr. Z have that major motivation, nearly all plutocrats have it, and, when he feeds us with lies about Obamacare, Paul Krugman has it, in his own meek, but highly influential way.

A few days ago, I surprised a lynx in the Alps (I know when and where to look for predators). I was very surprised by its color (reddish), and its enormous size. It fled for his life (we were only 3 meters apart). He was really fast, in the forest full of trees, with trunks of all sizes close to each other… And in total silence (differently from any other animal that size). Here I was, putting to flight an animal capable of slashing open the throat of a red deer, three times my weight, and with giant antlers.

Lynxes are known not to attack humans, even when their cubs are approached.

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TERRORISM FOSTERED HUMANITY:

Human beings evolved because not only they could hunt, and eat meat, but because they could terrorize their main opponents, the wild, ferocious predators. Torturing them helped. Bushmen, in South Africa could hunt a large animal, such as a giraffe, with poisoned arrows, chasing it down, once wounded, over an entire week.

Thus, torturing and killing are deep components of the human mind. They were key to survival. I have walked towards a lion pride resting below a tree, in Africa, as a child. Slowly. Just as slowly, the lionesses rose, and walked away. The king and queens of the jungle know well, most of the time, that human beings are like gods: they are better left alone, their parents taught them that, early on.

Now that we know this, that large predators can be instilled respect for human beings, we can take it into account, and reintroduce megafauna. Exerting surveillance for the most dangerous cases.

That lion killing dentist is a coward. Not a real player. Assassinating wildlife with over-powerful weapons is not getting reacquainted with the human condition. Were it the latter, he would accept not just to hunt, but to be hunted. Let him approach lions with bare hands (I did this more than once, as a child, in the wild). Instead of armed with a hyper-powerful bow with a laser range finder. Hunting the cowardly dentist ought to help him get in touch with full human ethology. So those condemning him all over the Internet are helping him become a real man.

Paying $50,000 to kill a well-known, half-tamed lion equipped with GPS, is not a way to exhibit respect for the biosphere. Yet, one should not forget that wild mega fauna will not survive if it is NOT worth the cost it inflicts, in physical damage and terror.

Lions (and other ferocious beasts: panthers, elephants, hippos, buffaloes, warthogs, etc.) are dangerous, and, themselves exert terror deliberately (when they do not outright kill people). When I lived in Africa, the natives feared and wanted to get rid of leopards (once in India, a particular leopard killed more than 200 people). Equipping leopards with GPS hooked to computers and security is the future. Clearly such systems (already used in Alberta, Canada, with grizzlies) are expensive in equipment and trained rangers.

As such an activity provides with the basics of hunting, just as fishing and releasing fish, it can satisfy the Dark Side, and make it serve the goodness of a preserved biosphere. But not just this. Exploiting animals is all right, if it allows them to survive as species, and ecosystems.

For dangerous predators, and other ferocious beasts to survive, they have to provide people with some other things dearer to them than life itself. That is why it was a mistake to destroy (as was just done in New York), tons of elephant ivory. Elephants ought to be harvested for ivory: then they will survive, because they will have economic utility (hence pay for their upkeep… in the wild). Same for rhinos: cut their horns, and sell them, under a government mandated program.

Otherwise, keep on contemplating the most massive genocide in 65 million years.

Morality’s essence? Morality is what worked before, in a sustainable fashion. But, as the world quickly mutates, what worked before cannot work any longer. Let’s adapt our morality. Don’t deny that the Dark Side existed. Don’t pretend that the Dark Side can be made to disappear by wishful thinking alone. Instead, ask what the Dark Side can do for us… that nothing else can replace. (To help focus here, contemplate the young dictator of North Korea, who, not only let his family members be eaten by dogs, but has threatened the USA with nuclear strikes, while working feverishly to make that possible, in spite of UN sanctions.)

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HARVEST & HARNESS THE DARK SIDE IF ENLIGHTENMENT YOU SEARCH:

Some will whine that this harnessing of the Dark Side is precisely what the “Free Market Theory“, all too often simply a disguise for blossoming plutocracy, claimed one ought to do, while bankers and plutophiles called it the “Invisible Hand“. However, not so. Plutocracy is a mix of the Dark Side, and the generalized fascism which civilization enables, with the potential of concentrating enormous power in a few hands. It is an enemy of intelligence, as it reduces many minds to just one, or a few.

Thus plutocracy is my enemy, and I put some effort in fighting it, because my Dark Side wants to devour it. Revolutions occur when enough denizens of We The People, want to destroy the plutocrats who rule over them.

Contrarily to what the ill-fated John Lennon hypocritically recommended, Revolutions are good, precisely because they destroy those super-predators known as plutocrats, aristocrats, theocrats, pirates, nobles, mandarins, generals, ayatollahs, bishops and the organizations which foster them, when their rule has become an insufferable imposition of their power, or those they serve.

Mao in 1959, in a secret report, revealed much later: it’s better to let half the population die, so that they other half gets plenty. The Dark Side, fully abominable. However this “Great Leap Forward” worked, as Mao had predicted it. Mao had said that great efforts then would bring “a thousand years of happiness“. And the most troubling part is that Mao’s plan worked: China leaped over India, and spectacularly far out over many other countries. The cleaned slate Mao’s unleashing of the Dark Side created obviously helped.

Just like more usage of the Dark Side helps keep the USA on the straighter and narrower, relative to more placid Europe.

Yet, it’s not just justice, and goodness which judge what is insufferable, but, also, the Dark Side itself. And there is more. Voltaire said that we ought to crush infamy. Yet it’s ultimately anger, which gets us into action, which makes us move, which provides with. Thus, the Dark Side judges, and also motivates.

We are mental landscapes of contrast, we need the Dark, be it just to define the Light. Fighting for the latter, means recognizing the former. Our beautiful species can thrive, as long as it respects the laws, be they only the laws of physics (that is not the case now, with multiple attacks we are visiting on the biosphere). To remind us of that, anything goes. And that cruelty, is a good thing, relative to the alternative.

So hunt lions. But only bad lions. Only with the worst predators can destroyed using all and any means the Dark Side puts at our command. The Dark Side, the useful and friendly Dark Side, feels that better case can be made for the survival of the smallpox virus, than for the blossoming of plutocracy. And stands ready to provide us with the strength we need.

And what about the deliberate killing of beauty, in all this? To overcome beauty is an exciting, and rather amusing challenge, for the Dark Side. If one can learn to enjoy killing beauty, one’s Dark Side is ready to take out much more than that. Its power grows. The more beautiful the lion, the more tempting to kill it, the more instructive, for those who cultivate the parts of the brain most keen, and apt, to handle adversity.

The Dark Side is strong and all-devouring. Beauty, just an appetizer. As Rabelais put it in 1534, in Gargantua (chap.5, line 108): “L’appétit vient en mangeant.”

31 Responses to “Why KILLING BEAUTY Makes SENSE”

Hippos are the animals which kill the largest numbers of humans in Africa, right before the taxi drivers. Yet when I was in Gabon, I often spent my Sundays with family on a beautiful beach, where a lagoon was separated from the sea by a thin sand stripe. There was a solitary female hippo, most probably an outcast, which came in from the lagoon at 17:00 sharp, every Sunday – never came on weekdays, when there was nobody on the beach. She quite clearly came to socialize with humans; she would stay on the sand for an hour or so, allowing kids to feed her, then she would waddle to the sea and swim in the surf. When crowded or harassed, she would charge, but as a warning – never killed anybody. My younger son, now a grown-up man, recently told me “you must have been plumb crazy to let us do that”.

Just one thing, the opposite of salt water is fresh water, not sweet water. But you knew it, only wrote too fast…

Dear Dominique:
Very nice hippo story. The most famous saint in Argentina had been tied to a tree by miscreants, to be devoured by wild beasts. A puma came, and protected her. And then there are the wolf children, the most famous being Romulus and Remus (it’s easy to see why: wild wolves can be tender and affectionate with humans… sometimes… especially if a female was so disposed, full of milk…)

I do appreciate, and I am thankful for, corrections to my (sometimes very numerous typos, especially as the automatic correcting systems sneak behind and modify later; from becomes form, field becomes filed, etc.) However in this particular case the discrepancy arises from comparing Californian English with Her Majesty’s blahblahblah. The British, who are most often incomprehensible to Californians, use “fresh” preferentially to “sweet” water, the later being more of a Western usage (there are lost of volcanoes in the West, and waters thus modified)

In any case, we agree that the interface between man and ferocious beasts (such as hippos, buffaloes, even… gazelles. I knew a white Frenchman who got gored, to death, by a supposedly tame gazelle: very sharp horns… He did not know her well, and she interpreted his behavior as threatening) involves large quantities of psychology. Not just terror, as I pointed out, but also respect.
PA

Alexi: Mutilating human nature by claiming it’s not what it is, is ineffective. With the weapons we have, we need a more effective mentality. A “human” sense which does not make full human sense , is not human. Because only making sense is human.

I see your point that evil is abhuman option. My point is that evil is stupid and boring with respect to the values I hold. There are acts that make no sense once values and intelligence come into play.

The values you hold depend upon the life you live, and have lived. These do not have to be, and are not, universal values. The Dark Side is much broader and much more necessary than just “evil”. Nietzsche skewered the concept of “evil”, BTW. He went “beyond” it.

My first point, in this field, the zeroth order point, is that the Dark Side, what many call “evil” is at the VERY CORE of humanity. To deny that makes us ineffective. One could say that Nietzsche made a particular case of that, relative to Christianity.

One can orient values whichever way one wants. When war comes knocking at the door, when that phone call comes,I have heard it myself, when that bomb explodes, I have felt it myself, the world changes, and all values one used to have, become irrelevant. One way Jews got destroyed so well in World War Two, is that their values were adapted to submission, And they did not evolve in a timely manner into (counter-) aggression.

I don’t know your values, I doubt they are submissive. My point about the Jews is that they had to fight, to switch to full combat mode. The Jews had to extract a price from their oppressors. A price not just in blood, in evil morality deployed, for all to see, and also a price in scandal. The founders of the state of Israel understood this, over the uncomprehending whining of Isaac Berlin

As I said, Isaac Berlin went all around, saying: “They listened to Hitler, not to us.” It’s always a good idea to listen to one’s predator. When I run in the wilderness, I never, ever, use earphones… I used to, long, long ago…

“The king and queens of the jungle know well, most of the time, that human beings are like gods.”

Most of the time probably being the catch in this instance. I seem to recall an issue with illegal migrants into South Africa being stalked and eaten en masse by pride of lion(esse)s, during their night travels through a wildlife preserve. From the left-over clothes and personal effects, the casualties might be quite high, and the big cats, quite well-fed, and happy with those naked apes that can’t fight back.
(FWIW, and still IIRC, there was a find, back in the 90’s???, about a regional “sub-culture” of chimpanzees I think, that had taken to hunting lions among others.)

Well, national park lionesses do not fear humans, they just observe edible walking sausages.

I can tell you that the doctrine has changed in the USA. In the past, they used to tell people to lie prone when attacked. Now, at least for mountain LIONS, they tell you to fight back. I have been attacked, even charged by bears, and I found that they fear stones. I have even hit a bear which had just charged me, with a stone, and it fled for its life (long story). The same bear gravely injured a grandmother three weeks later, and was killed by rangers.Usually I just throw a stone where it will make lots of noise (not on the bear).

I charged mountain lions three times.

A wolf specialist in Italy (who had never seen any in the wild!) said that, as wolves lose their fear of man, there could be deadly attacks. Personally, I believe it’s enough to throw the occasional stone. The lynx I saw was huge, but he hangs around a valley with plenty of people (and hunters). He is clearly aware of the danger presented by man (as mountain lions generally are in California). In any case predators favor late afternoon, dusk, or night.

Once I was charged by huge elk who assumed I was a (mountain) lion. When he realized his mistake, he went back where it came from (so called “deer trees”). The whole thing happened so fast, it was astounding, considering the 1,000 pounds of the beast.

And back, kind of, to this entry, and to my usual pet peeves, what do you make of the recent, ongoing, piecemeal disclosure about a seemingly permeating paedophilia “issue” among the English elites?
Since a couple years, disclosure after disclosure of such and such public and/or political figure having been a sex-predator preying on children, only to be protected by powerful libels laws (hence, the “leaks” about deceased fellows only), and under the indifferent gaze of knowing powers-that-be (from the BBC to Margaret Thatcher to MI5).
And, to keep this in an amusing light :
– Since the Westminster paedophile ring scandals has started gaining traction, I couldn’t help but notice an increased shrillness about the Calais issue. Some kind of counter-fire by the Perfide Albion? I couldn’t imagine the English would be so devious!
– Most funny to me, it does seem like that old kook, new agey conman and all-around weirdo David Ickes was right all along, in his sex abuses claims. Next thing you know, maybe the queen mother DOES lay eggs, as a good she-lizard, after all.

“new agey conman and all-around weirdo David Ickes was right all along, ”

Recently, I read it’s seems to be taking only 4 years for tin-foil-hat conspiracy theories to become mainstream news! There’s something in that. We are accepting what would have been unacceptable 30 years ago.

Most of what David Icke says is nonsense, but there’s one clip of him I really relate too. He talks about “repeaters”. That most humans just “repeat” something they heard or read and think it’s a fact. A chain of people that just repeat what people in power said, journalists being the prime example. Here’s the link:

Demonstrated recently, chatting with some colleagues about the horrors of ISIS. Somebody asked “Whose their leader? Do they have a president or something?”, The reply was blank faces all round. We all knew about the beheadings, the caliphate, the extremisme, because we’d been told that. But so far, the media have not focussed on any leaders, so we don’t know that.

Other than direct experience, everything we know, has been put in their by somebody else.

I have no doubt that sexual practices are strongly culturally controlled. In particular, pedophilia. In Antique Greece sexual activity involving what is viewed nowadays as underage people was carefully thought about, and would be completely unlawful now. From the Ancient Greek point of view, it was all about instruction. When dealing with young adults, a sterner morality ruled (something counterintuitive now).

I have no doubt that there are cultural differences between France and England in these matters. Historically, France has inherited the standard Roman virile position that the leaders are conquerors in all ways (including sexual). Conquering children is below the dignity of such virile leaders (as I said, the Greek position was different; but sex with underage in Greece was viewed as instructional, a question of trust, not at all a conquest…).

Along these lines, Napoleon detested virgins, and required only experienced women. Differently from Mao Tse Tung, the “Communist” dictator, who boasted of having taken “3,000 virgins” (thus being superior to the Jihadists, and their 70 virgins).

On the face of it, it seems, indeed, that pedophilia exerts a fascination among the leadership in Britain (but there was also standard sex, dutifully recorded by prostitutes). Maybe a consequence of plutocracy: when none of your outrages go far enough to be noticed, than doing something clearly illegal, and morally outrageous helps?

I do agree with you, too, that the Calais madness is a distraction which the English right wing uses. If Britain wants less of it, let them just pass a law saying the Queen’s subjects have to justify of their identity.

The EU just send 20 million (Euros) to France to (help) handle the crisis. But, fundamentally, it’s a British crisis (no ID there).

Is the Dark Side your take on what many call “sociopathy”? Much of what you write here does reflect the “anti-life” idea I recall reading many decades ago in The Anatomy of Destructiveness” by Eric Fromm.

Also, there is a difference between killing for necessity and killing for survival. For sure, a resistance to feelings of empathy did give some humans an advantage when we had to kill to survive. But cruelty for no purpose is of no value (by definition!) and in the long run, will cause us harm.

I do not believe we are all capable of such cruelty, in my experience there is a spectrum with a small minority of genuine sadists. Taking pleasure from cruelty is also vastly different to being cruel without realising, which is something we often do as children for example. The key is that we feel remorse when we do become aware of our unintentional cruelty.

My belief now is that a few sociopaths corrupt a somewhat larger bunch to do their bidding. The damage done by that few is totally disproportionate to their numbers. Yet so far, the majority show no appetite for identifying and eliminating sociopaths. Maybe the sociopaths who in power are masters of distracting us from the real problems? One of their distractions is to use arguments like “we are all murders, we are all savage”. After all, our rulers are the descendants of the most brutal, savage, mediaval sociopaths who survived a time when killing ones own family to gain power was the norm.

“Sociopathy” on the face of it, means “social pain”. The Nazis did not feel any “social pain” until the Royal Air Force bombing runs affected their sleeping patterns.

One of my point was that cruelty, the ability to enjoy inflicting it, has evolutionary value. How? By torturing an animal, or a human enemy, one instills fear, thus respect.

As I made plenty clear, I enjoy running and hiking in the wilderness. This is rendered possible, because each time I meet a bear, wolf, lion, they see me, and my kind, more as potential trouble, than potential meal. Similarly, stomping heavily in snake country, instill fear in snakes. Instilling respect with blows works even very well with my enemies the wasps: hit a wasp once, and it will go away, for its life.

Remorse is also a genuine human emotion, and behavioral pattern. Like cruelty, it’s more or less developed.

The Stanford Prison experiment showed cruelty was much more ubiquitous than people believed. But that comes short of the conditions, and pleasures of, say, the Inquisition. My own opinion is that all people are capable of maximal cruelty, in the style of the Galactic eMPEROR IN sTAR wARs. Most people are just not the emperor in Star Wars, or Ivan the Terrible. They cannot give free reins to their own cruelty, and grow it.

So how does one define good? By making sure that conditions where cruelty can blossom do not arise.

The present political and socioeconomic order favors rule by maniacs, that’s true. However, the “we are all savages” argument can easily be turned around. If we are all savages, none of us ought to be in position to deploy his/her savagery. Thus:

1) we should not respect our present leaders (hey, they are savages)

2) we should practice the ultimate balance of powers, Direct Democracy

We agree on much, but not all! I cannot see The Inquisition (and it’s like) as anything other than an aberration that needs to be rooted OUT of the human psyche, not held up as a positive evolutionary aspect.

The Inquisition didn’t survive, after all…neither did the cruel Nazi’s or Japanese in WW2. And neither will ISIS. Eventually they will collapse from within as the majority of people do not take pleasure from sadistic cruelty, only a very few do.

Stanford prison experiment, like Milgrams, shows that ordinary people can inflict violence on others *when put in certain social structures*. Certainly in Milgrams, most subjects showed angst at being ordered to inflict pain. Only a few didn’t – the sociopaths, who will inflict pain for no apparent reason, for no apparent gain.

So although most humans are capable of that appalling behaviour, what is going on “between their ears” may be very different. Most will avoid being put in those sort of situations. Only the few seek them out and actively create them.

Unfortunately those few have dominated our social systems ruling classes for centuries. WHich is why I totally agree than we should not respect our leaders. Our leaders are evolutionary dead ends. Grey, middle aged men who could not survive in nature, but thrive by lying, decieving, cheating and having no limit to the cruelty they will order others to dish out.

In “might is right” then we should abandon democracy and all issues settled by a fight to the death between the leaders of our nations. I’d vote for that!

Dear Hazxan: It’s curious that I left the impression I somehow thought the Inquisition was a good idea. I think it was horrendous, and place Ferdinand, king of Arago (who pushed Isabella to implement the torture and expulsion when not assassination of Jews), in my hierarchy of Hitler’s predecessors.
Throwing Jews and then Muslims out of Spain was abominable, a severe loss for civilization, and I advocate their full right of return, with full Spanish and European citizenship, and some form of restitution.

The Inquisition conducted its last execution for “heresy” (making a choice), in 1834, or so. Thus it lasted nearly 350 years.

Patrice Ayme: Am I supposed to laugh? Ultimately, the really very Dark Side, such as yours truly, requires the plebs to amuse themselves with. The plebs is like an attraction, a ride, a mountain to climb, a stimulant, etc. It’s a bit like the fox needing chicken. Wolves just killed like 20 sheep out there, in the mountain next door, and maimed critically another ten. They did not eat them, just drinking some of their blood. Life in full requires diversity.

PA: Masters need servants. No servitude, no domination. Besides I happen to pay people to do boring work, or work I am not capable of doing, like operating a plane, on my behalf.
Besides, real plutocrats love to do cruel things. They need prey to exert their art. Plutos eating Plutos can be dangerous and certainly stressing. Best to have a plebs to oppress, as the Spartans had with the Helots. Plutocracy is a calling, a passion, a pleasure, not just a comfort.

Hmmm… I have been known to make stupid typos, including the occasional forgotten negation, and that sentence looks like a classical case of bad writing, I have to look into this one. Thanks for pointing it out. (I want very much to correct typos and bad, or unclear writing, so this sort of correction is most welcome! :-))

Thanks again! I have an obdurate pneumonia right now, and I could not understand the sentence you pointed out. So I changed it to make it much clearer along the lines you said. I made also some modifications along the essay… Montaigne used to do that with his essays (I have the complete version, with all the modifications… In English, hahaha). Anyway it should all flow better… And now I am going to rest…